


you could be my unintended

by paperclipbitch



Category: The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Bonding, Developing Friendships, F/F, Hospitals, Injury Recovery, Post-Series, Pre-Femslash, Recovery, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 08:03:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12294888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: Colleen surprises herself by drifting back to the hospital.





	you could be my unintended

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heroisms (tiny_white_hats)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiny_white_hats/gifts).



> [Title from _Unintended_ by Muse.] Misty/Colleen is a huge ship of mine from the comics, and I literally wept when they met each other in the show, so I had to leap on the chance to write for them! **heroisms** mentioned writing for them in canon so this is set after the end of the _Defenders_ series - I guess it leans more toward pre-femslash BUT they needed to develop a bond and the intent here is definitely that they're eventual girlfriends :)))
> 
> There's a bit of handwaving re: how long Misty would even BE in hospital, maybe there were complications, just go with it.

Everyone has their own way of handling their personal aftermath.

Jessica clambers her way in and out of bottles with her brand of savage grace, and Danny spends more time meditating than he does fully conscious nowadays, and Claire and Luke apparently haven’t left their bed for several days – all reasonable reactions, and none of them what Colleen wants or needs right now.

She surprises herself by drifting back to the hospital.

Misty is tired, painkillers sparking in her eyes, and Colleen gets the feeling she’d be hostile if she could work up the energy to it. As it is, she just looks worn: wrung out and hung out to dry badly, left behind in all of her pieces.

“I don’t want or need your guilt,” she tells Colleen, maybe the third time she visits. Her room is full of floral arrangements; seems like most of Harlem has sent something.

“I know,” Colleen replies, because she _does_. She’ll feel it anyway, but she tries to keep the worst of it off her face.

Misty studies her thoughtfully; she’s not exactly in her right mind right now, the sharpness Colleen was learning in her expression is blurred at the edges, but there’s something so ingrained in her that not even the worst of circumstances can stamp it out. She’s reading something in Colleen’s expression; maybe reading more than Colleen is even aware is there.

“Okay,” she says at last, leaning back into her pillows. It’s not a statement of weakness, a dropping of whatever mask it is Misty is wearing that keeps her from going halfway mad in her hospital bed, but it’s a tacit laying down of weapons, a truce. “Okay.”

-

It turns out Misty can play pretty much any game that you can gamble on. “It’s a cop thing,” she explains, on an awkward shrug that lands a little off-kilter. “Especially if you’re going undercover.”

There’s a story or two there, stories she doesn’t trust Colleen with yet, but there’s a hint that she might one day.

They start with blackjack and four kinds of poker: Colleen is the dealer and Misty doesn’t need an extra hand to sort with her cards. They play for candy, sliding Life Savers back and forth across the table. Colleen brings dice, and they start with craps and progress to Chō-Han and sic bo; Misty tells Colleen about three different gambling dens she brought down while casually winning all of the candy, stacking it up like chips with her good hand.

“You should bring mahjong,” Misty says, popping a piece of candy in her mouth, once she’s finished taking Colleen for everything she has.

Colleen arches an eyebrow. “What, I’m Asian, so I must be able to play mahjong?”

Misty shrugs. “If you can’t, I’ll teach you.”

She keeps Colleen’s gaze, unblinking, until Colleen finally lets herself crack, smiling. “Fine,” she says, “I think I know where I can get a set.”

-

By now, Colleen thought the floral arrangements would have gone by now, faded and died, but there seem to be new ones every time she drops by. 

“My guys are good guys,” Misty remarks when she catches her looking. “And I think Mr Nelson thinks if he sends me enough flowers I might forget that no one’s seen his beaten-up lawyer friend since Midland Circle.”

Colleen opens her mouth and closes it again; it’s not her secret to betray, after all, even if it might not even matter anymore. Misty smiles. It’s a little worn, a little sharp, but it’s honest. 

“It’s okay,” she says, “I’m getting pretty good at leaving things out of my reports these days.” She looks down at her bandages. “Well, I was, anyway.”

Colleen is aware of a shift in the air; the feeling of when the ice beneath you creaks.

“You’ll go back,” she says, and isn’t even when her voice sounds more certain than she is. It’s a good trick she learned a long time ago.

“I don’t have that life to go back to anymore,” Misty says, and when Colleen starts to speak, she cuts her off. “It’s not just the- the arm.” She laughs, something bitter in it, and looks away. “You know what I miss? When the mob was the mob, when criminals were just normal people breaking laws, when people you had to fight moved at human speeds and bled when you cut them and stayed down when you put them there.”

Part of Colleen knows what she means, but she made that transition a long time ago. 

“I know,” Misty continues, “we’re all doing that, everyone has to have their sleepless nights as they readjust, I know.” She sounds a little frantic, a little too close to an edge Colleen knows that she’s avoiding, because no one knows where that one ends. It’s possible that it doesn’t.

Colleen considers her answers. “You can’t go back,” she says, and almost winces, because for a minute it sounds inane and ridiculous, Misty missing her arm, superpowered defenders scattered badly across the city, the promise of probable retribution on the horizon – or some fresh new hell, anyway. Still, she’s learned Misty values honesty over placations.

“No,” Misty agrees; she sounds tired.

-

“Don’t you have classes to teach?” Misty asks one afternoon. Colleen is channel-hopping, idle, though the silences between them are comfortable now instead of strained. Misty tolerates her company and Colleen finds herself comforted by the atmosphere, where she is known, if not understood.

“I’ll… get back to those,” Colleen allows, because she does love her dojo, the clientele she’s built up, the students she worked so hard with. There’s been a bigger picture to look at lately, but if they really _have_ taken down the worst of the Hand, then maybe there’s a little breathing room to look at her smaller picture again.

Besides, Danny and Luke have been using her dojo for their own ridiculous purposes lately; they promise to fix any damage they cause, and who is Colleen to stand in the way of slightly weird superhero male bonding anyway?

Misty is still looking at her, something thoughtful in her expression, and Colleen hears herself blurting: “I can help, you know. When you get out.” Misty says nothing, and she adds: “I know you’re going to have physio, but I know about different ways to move your body, about muscle compensation – I’ve fought alongside people with amputations before.”

Something is very still in Misty’s face; it’s a complicated expression that’s somehow more difficult to read than Misty’s actual poker face. Colleen isn’t sure if it’s angry or wistful or perhaps grateful, underneath it all.

“Danny’s called Stark Industries,” Colleen tells Misty, because maybe Danny’s said something, maybe he hasn’t. His intentions are good, but he’s not always good at the next part. “About prosthetics.”

Misty nods; the fingers of her remaining hand are taut on the blanket, knuckles pale. 

“Yeah,” she says tightly, “can we put a pin in this conversation?”

Part of Colleen wants to push, but she knows Misty is having mandatory therapy sessions, and they barely knew each other before this and only know each other a little better now – this still feels fragile enough to break at the wrong word.

“Sure,” she says, and turns up the television until the tension in Misty’s shoulders eases.

-

“If we’re going to talk again,” Misty announces, bone dry, “we’re gonna need a mediator.”

She tilts her head at her bedside cabinet; when Colleen pushes aside a pile of old crime novels she thinks have come from Luke, she finds a still sealed bottle of bourbon.

“Well, that’s unexpected,” she remarks.

Misty cracks a grin. “Jessica keeps dropping them by.” When Colleen’s expression turns surprised, she adds: “I don’t drink them, she just collects the old bottle and swaps it for a new one.”

Colleen’s not sure she can imagine what Misty and Jessica can find to talk about, and says as much.

“We don’t talk,” Misty replies, expression still amused. “She comes by outside of visiting hours, drops off her booze, and leaves again. I think this means we’re friends now.”

“Sounds about right,” Colleen agrees, replacing the bottle and sliding the books back into place. “I brought backgammon,” she adds.

Misty arches an eyebrow, sceptical. “Seriously?”

“I’m trying to find something you can’t win at immediately,” Colleen explains, reaching for her bag where the board is.

“You’re gonna be searching a long time,” Misty tells her, with a hint of her old fire.

-

Colleen’s lived what feels like a lot of lives by now, each one different in its own way, each one etched with brutality. They never end well.

None of those lives have ever involved the police – she’s never needed cops, never believed in them, never been in a situation where they could ever have helped. They’ve been nuisances, or background noise. 

Now, she accepts that for all the mess they created, they needed the police that night to save people around Midland Circle. And Misty Knight saved her life, maybe once, maybe twice. 

The fact is that Colleen met Misty in that shitty police station and she was tired and scared and annoyed and in pain, and she still trusted her. And Misty looked at her and saw – god knows what she saw, but she believed in it. Colleen doesn’t believe in fate and destiny the way Danny has to, the way people seem to when you dunk them in chemicals and turn them into something else, but she didn’t feel anything when she met Danny, who turned her life inside out, but she felt something when she met Misty.

“You let me keep my sword,” she says, half to herself.

Misty is a heap on a couch, looking smaller than she really is, but the room doesn’t smell clinical and there’s no orderlies bustling by every two minutes, and apparently everyone else is dropping by here later with beer and pizza and their barely-hidden relief. Colleen’s early. Of course she’s early.

“It’s a katana,” Misty corrects. “Passed down through the generations of your family.” She grins at Colleen’s expression. “I’m good,” she says. “I was always good.”

“You’re avoiding the question,” Colleen corrects her. “You’re not _that_ good.”

“You’re the one who didn’t ask,” Misty replies, and it shouldn’t feel comfortable, this difficult back and forth as they figure each other out, but it _does_.

“Fine,” Colleen says, “you let me keep my katana. Why? I was a wisp of a kid you were half-sure was about to die on the floor of your breakroom, everyone was lying to you, and you gave me a lethal weapon you were pretty sure I shouldn’t have had in the first place.”

“That was a hell of a night,” Misty says, and she sounds wistful. Colleen catches flashes of the Misty she remembers first meeting, but there aren’t many of them – she doesn’t know how long it’ll take to dig them all back out again. 

Colleen waits.

“I knew you’d be fine,” Misty says at last, like she’s being forced to give something up. “I looked at you and I knew you’d be fine.”

After a moment Colleen shifts enough that she can knock her knee against Misty’s; it’s not a touch, it’s not real contact, but it’s maybe the first time they’ve touched since Colleen was trying to get Misty to an ambulance before she bled out. Colleen isn’t a touchy-feely person, but sometimes there are moments that need something tangible.

“You’ll be fine too, you know,” she says. She startles herself by how much she means it.

Misty looks at where her jeans are just about touching Colleen’s pants, something that isn’t significant but feels it anyway.

“It’s okay,” Colleen adds, “I’ll believe it for the both of us.”

Misty’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes, but it’s real anyway.

The doorbell goes. “That’ll be Luke,” Colleen says, body poised to leap up and answer it.

“Ah, leave him a minute,” Misty says, fingers twitching.

“Okay,” Colleen replies, and doesn’t move.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] you could be my unintended](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13102164) by [knight_tracer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer)




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